Mark Knoop
London based pianist and conductor Mark Knoop is known for his fearless performances and individual interpretations. He is currently Turner Sims Fellow at the University of Southampton.
London based pianist and conductor Mark Knoop is known for his fearless performances and individual interpretations. He is currently Turner Sims Fellow at the University of Southampton.
Mantra
2014 release ** "Composed in 1970, Mantra, for two pianos and ring modulation, was one of the decisive turning points in Karlheinz Stockhausen’s career. The 70-minute piece not only signalled a break with the text-based intuitive works, relying heavily on improvisation, that had come to dominate his output towards the end of the previous decade and a return to fully notated scores, but also introduced the idea of melodic formulae, the “mantra” of the title, which Stockhausen would eventually dev…
Etudes Boreales / Harmonies / 10'40.3"
2025 stock Enormous technical requirements make John Cage's "Etudes Boreales" a highly virtuosic work, which requires an extreme sensitivity of feeling for the coordination of fingers, instrument, and intellect. On this CD it is presented in versions: for piano solo and later for cello solo with piano solo. As in the sister works, "Etudes Australes" and "Freeman Etudes", Cage based the "Etudes Boreales" on a star chart. He used the chart of the northern sky that the Czech astronomer Antonín Bečv…
Towards a slowing of the past
Bryn Harrison writes music that deliberately disorients. The British composer—obsessed with "time, memory, and cyclic structures"—follows Feldman's lead, creating perceptual labyrinths where past bleeds into present and nothing stays quite where you expect. Towards a slowing of the past, a 45-minute tour de force for two pianos and electronics, achieves disorientation through sheer density: a whirlwind of notes that somehow maintains "delicacy and deftness of touch."
Mark Knoop and Roderick Chad…
Dirt Road
Receiving the Approaching Memory, composed in 2011 for Aisha Orazbayeva and Mark Knoop, is among Bryn Harrison’s most celebrated works - an extended meditation on memory, recognition, and the evolving experience of musical time. The piece unfolds in five substantial sections, each built around networks of repetitive figures that spiral and shimmer, gradually reducing the pitch material from full chromaticism to only two common notes by the end. Rather than simply repeating, Harrison’s patterns m…
Matthew Shlomowitz and Peter Ablinger
Works by Matthew Shlomowitz and Peter Ablinger for piano and found sounds. Mark Knoop performs Matthew Shlomowitz's "Popular Contexts", for piano and sampler keyboard and selections from Peter Ablinger's ongoing cycle "Voices and Piano". Both works deal with collected sonic objects - Shlomowitz's widely varied samples, ranging from insect noises to airline safety announcements, and the recorded speech of Ablinger's subjects - forcing them into musical juxtaposition with the piano.
"Popular Conte…